


The Better Half

by newsbypostcard (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU political thriller:</p><p>When Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton undercuts his own announcement of candidacy in the upcoming election by instead instigating Reynoldsgate, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton is faced with an impossible choice. Does she stand by Alexander's side and continue to support his career with her indisputable pedigree, or does she erase herself from his narrative and strike out on her own for the first time in twenty years?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better Half

**Author's Note:**

> I am Canadian, so while I'm gonna do my best with understanding and representing the enigmatic US system, I'm also intentionally taking some liberties on how it works. Please allow my ignorance to be politely washed away by the fact that this is an AU of a musical based on 18th century politics, and that I will be emphasizing the opportunity to make jokes more than I will actual political accuracy. Influences will include: Chernow's biography; The Good Wife; Scandal; and The West Wing, among others. Though familiarity with none of these is necessary, some of the lines from Hamilton's opening speech are in fact verbatim from the cold open of s1e1 of The Good Wife.

  


It isn’t holding his hand that’s difficult. 

It’s the same hand she’s always held -- the same one that slipped into hers at her own godforsaken party, twenty years earlier, as he’d led her out onto the dance floor. It grips to hers now as it did then -- tight at her fingers, loose at the palm, clammy with nerves and yet at once certain. It leads her with just too much haste, causing her to fall half a pace behind him; it leads her with the strengths offered by the hubris and conviction that control his every waking second. 

She follows now with a bewilderment that is not dissimilar to what she felt back then; it is, at least, familiar. Following in the footsteps she first imprinted upon the world twenty years ago, with her arm pulled gently forward and a peculiar counterbalance in her heels -- that is not difficult. Not anymore. Not after all this time. 

It’s the letting go. That’s what’s difficult. 

It’s the apprehension that follows that she doesn’t know how to bear. She knows that this is the last moment he will ever be truly hers; she knows that the second before he lets go is the last moment she will be able to truthfully call him _her_ Alexander. 

Her hand feels cool as his slips away. She grasps her fingers into her own palm, stabilizing, as though to warm them, as she stands by his side. 

The cameras flash. 

She already feels so tired. 

Alexander steps up to the microphone. 

“Good morning.” The rigor of her spine matches the veracity of his tone; in posture, they stand united, their bodies driven to strength out of the necessity of desperation. “An hour ago, I resigned as Secretary for the Treasury of the United States of America. I did this with a heavy heart, and in an attempt to fight these scurrilous charges.” He pauses to swallow; the only sound is of the flash of photography. “At the requests of Vice President Jefferson, Senator Madison, and Senator Burr, I submitted copies of my 2014 personal expense reports to the Senate for review. Though, in reviewing the expense reports of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to submit these papers to the Senate. I want to be clear: I have never abused my office. I may have mortally wounded my prospects, but my papers are orderly.” 

Alexander blinks, seems to pause just to allow the cameras to flash; but Eliza knows better. For his even stare, Alexander is terrified. 

She watches a singular droplet of sweat descend from his brow, swipe along the line of his jaw, then dip beneath to track his neck. “The charge against me,” he continues, his voice clear and even, “is in connection with one James Reynolds, for purposes of improper speculation. My real crime --” and he pauses to adjust one hand on the podium, as though it may help him support the weight of his vice -- “is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his knowing consent.” 

Eliza focuses her gaze on something far away, at the back of the room, so that she may maintain her grip on calm. Alexander waxes on; his words wend as they ever do. They build castles, they build cathedrals, and Eliza feels herself withdrawing from this realm. She grips at her own fingers as he speaks as though to coax herself into calm by physically holding herself together. 

She can endure this. She _will_ endure this. She will walk by his side as he ruins their lives, as agreed. 

But she will not stay to watch it burn. 

  


  


  


When the news conference airs, Jefferson drops the folder in his hand and rises to his feet.

“Turn that up,” he demands, and gestures at the television. Madison blinks his confusion, startled into a cough; but it’s only seconds before he sees the news marquee at the bottom of the screen and grabs the remote from beside him.

Hamilton’s voice floods the room as the television unmutes.

“--for a considerable time with his knowing consent. I had frequent meetings with her, most of them in my own house--”

Jefferson gives a low whistle. “In his own house?”

“In his own house,” Madison agrees; then, together -- “ _Damn_.”

“--Mrs. Hamilton being absent with our children; on vacation; with a visit to her father--”

If Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton notices that she’s being addressed, it’s not obvious on her face. She stands stalk straight, her hands folded primly in front of her; her expression is one of perfect neutrality. Jefferson shakes his head as he watches her. “Won’t even call her Eliza on national television. Sounds like he’s gonna get a divorce handed to him on top of it all.” He turns to Madison with a wide grin. “Hate to see what job he’s gonna have to get to support himself now.”

“She is standing by him, though,” Madison says. “It must be nice to have a Schuyler by your side.”

“If he has any hope of pulling through this, he’s gonna need her reputation to hold him up. _Again_. I’m amazed she’s doing even this much. I’d let him burn.”

“--Mr. Reynolds extorted me. I paid him quarterly. I have reason for shame--”

“And how,” Madison mutters.

“--but I have not committed treason. The money used in these transactions--”

Jefferson actually _gasps_. “Transactions?! Did he actually just say that? He actually just said that!”

“--was mine and mine alone. No public funds were ever utilized; I never spent a cent that wasn’t mine. I have done nothing to provoke legal action.”

“My god.” Jefferson holds a fist to his mouth. “His and his alone? Give me a _break_. He used his _wife’s money_ to keep his affair hush-hush.” He looks at Madison with an expression of undiluted joy. “Do you ever get the feeling that these United States of America hold the best of everything this world has to offer, Senator?”

“Somehow today more than other days, sir.”

“$26,000 later, and this is where he lands.” Jefferson shakes his head. “Well, you know what this means -- he’s never gonna be President now.”

“Never gonna be President now,” Madison agrees.

Jefferson turns to look at the phone that’s begun ringing on his desk and waves a hand at the television as though to encourage him to mute it again. “You know, Madison -- in some respects, it’s a damn shame.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“Well, let me put it this way. I wouldn’t want to be Elizabeth Schuyler right now.” He frowns down at the six flashing lights on his phone; he expected congratulations on the significance of what he’s achieved today, but he didn’t expect to have to do all this work at once. “More than anyone, she’s the one who’s got the longest road in front of her. Considering where she’s been, that’s saying something. Can you imagine if she’d put all that influence into a surer thing than Hamilton in the first place?” He picks up the receiver. "She'd be in a different place now, that's for sure."

  


  


  


Eliza is already most of the way through a bottle of wine when Angelica knocks on her door.

She takes her time in finding her way to the front entrance and throws the door open dramatically, one hand still wrapped around her wine glass. Angelica looks back at her with even sobriety as she leans the weight of her body against the open door.

“Can we kill him?” Angelica asks, in lieu of greeting.

“We’ll discuss it. We have to stop joking about it if we want to go through with it, though,” Eliza tells her. “Ears everywhere. Although -- _apparently_ \-- not where it _counts_.”

Angelica purses her lips and steps inside, letting her overnight bag fall to the floor with the same flourish Eliza offers in a dramatic slamming the door. Then Angelica steps forward, envelops her sister in her arms, and hums the opening to the song their father would sing them when one of them was ill. “Okay,” Angelica says eventually. “No jokes, then. Serious inquiries only. Princess Diana died in a car crash, that sounds pretty easy to recreate, right?”

Eliza gives a laugh, the snuffley kind, against the crook of her sister’s neck. “No,” she says nasally, and she pushes away from the affection before she can get properly emotional. She hands Angelica the glass and waves a tipsy hand in the air as she turns back into the apartment, hoping she’s projecting the air of detachment she’s aiming for. “It’s _fine_.”

“Nothing about this is fine,” Angelica insists, following her and downing the remaining wine quickly. “Tell me you at _least_ yelled at him.”

“Oh, I yelled at him.” Eliza throws herself down on the sofa, wholly horizontal. “I yelled. Almost started a fire. Woke the kids. Wasn’t pretty. Maybe could’ve gotten arrested. But I yelled.”

“Well, he deserved it.”

She waves that tipsy hand again. “Whateverrrr. It’s _done_. It’s over with! We did the press conference, and now he can go off and fuck whoever he wants without having to lie about it anymore.” She rolls into something like a kneeling position and begins collecting pillows. “I’ll never be enough. You know that, I know that, _he_ knows that, so really, it’s best for everyone. You even tried to tell me, like twenty years ago, that he’ll never be satisfied, and now I know what that _meant._ ” She turns to sit cross-legged in front of her pile of pillows and meets Angelica’s eye. “So now I’m free,” she deadpans.

Angelica purses her lips. “Uh-huh. Say, does this newfound freedom involve a divorce contract, perchance?”

Eliza falls backwards. “Nope.”

“Eliza.”

“Ang, _please_. I need my sister right now, okay? I don’t need a lawyer.”

“You do need a lawyer, actually--”

“I don’t.”

“You _do_. You need to get _out_ of this marriage. God made pre-nups for a reason.”

“Angelica. Did you see the press conference?”

Angelica hesitates. “It was muted at my landing gate,” she admits.

“So you saw I was there.”

Angelica sighs and looks wistfully at the empty wine bottle. “Yes.”

“So you know I stood by his side as he … unpacked our … entire … sordid … fucking … marriage… in front of the entire nation.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to stand by his side _after_ he unpacked your entire sordid fucking marriage in front of the en--”

“Yes it does.”

Angelica pinches her nose and takes a steadying breath. “Eliza.”

“Angelica, you don’t _know_.”

“Oh, _good_. I’d love to hear again about how I don’t _understand_ marriage just because I decided to _eschew_ it for my _career_.”

“Good. Because you don’t.”

“Elizabeth, the fact that I decided not to get married proves ipso facto that I understand it better than everyone who does.”

“I’m not gonna fight with you today. I’m not. I’m done fighting.” She gestures at Alexander as he appears suddenly at the opposite end of the room and throws her face into her den of pillows. “Inspo farcto.”

There’s something to be said, Angelica’s forced to admit, for Eliza’s logic. It’s hard to understand how she can tell Eliza just to leave him like it’s easy when -- even now, after all this -- Angelica’s own breath still catches in her chest at the very sight of him.

Even when he is looking pathetically at her in silk pyjamas, hair drooping from its tie, past midnight, exiled in his own apartment -- still, god help her, it catches.

_God help them all._

“Angelica,” says Alexander, blinking blearily at her.

“All the way from London,” confirms Eliza’s muffled voice from her couch nest; and then she resurfaces to look for the wine again, only for her eyes to settle on the empty bottle. “Damn.”

“Angelica,” he repeats. She can _see_ the goddamn gears kicking into gear behind his eyes. “Thank _god_ \-- someone who understands what I’m struggling here to do.”

“I’m not here for _you_ ,” Angelica interrupts flatly.

This -- _this_ , of all things -- brings him to shut his fucking mouth.

Angelica gets to her feet, fury guiding her actions. “I’ll be right back,” she mutters to Eliza, setting a hand on her leg.

“Don’t kill him for real though,” Eliza says, face still buried in the cushions.

Angelica wrenches him by the arm down the hall, and he has the decency to fall behind her for a respectable three seconds before finally fighting to match step with her. She throws him into the study, where he has, at least, had the decency to move the majority of his clothing and belongings; and she uses the last sliver of control she has left to close the door softly, so as not to wake the children.

“Are you for fucking serious?” she asks him, crowding his personal space with fury as much as with form.

Alexander actually looks _cowed_ ; he takes two steps back, colliding with the filing cabinet, his hands flying behind him to catch himself before he truly falls at her feet. “I -- don’t expect you to understand _all_ that--”

“You don’t _expect me_ to _understand_?” she hisses. She bunches her fist in the front of his ridiculous silk pyjama shirt and only narrowly talks herself out of ripping it off his body and stuffing it down his throat. “You’re right, Alexander. I can’t _possibly_ understand how you could do this to _my sister_ \--”

“This isn’t about her,” he counters, at once bewildered and too calm.

“--after _all_ she has done for you -- rising you from _poverty_ , bringing you _status_ , bringing you _pedigree_ , maneuvering you into a position where you could even _begin_ to be a contender for the Cabinet, and _now_ \--”

Alexander’s expression has darkened. “I did plenty of work of my own,” he reminds her, challenging.

“Yes,” Angelica replies, tone positively _dripping_ in venom. “You _worked_ all the way through our family vacation upstate. You _worked_ your way into a summer frenzy, and then you _worked_ your way right into another woman’s pants.”

“I seem to remember when I met you, Angelica, that _you_ were looking for a man at _work_ , so why should anyone else be _above_ what--” 

But when Angelica takes that final step forward, Alexander cranes his neck back and lets the sentence falter. “Listen to me,” she says, her voice shaking with the effort of keeping it steady. “You’re not going to talk yourself into my good graces; not this time. Now I’ve only been here for ten minutes, but here’s what I’m getting from this picture right now. I know my sister like I know my own mind -- you will never find _anyone_ as trusting or as kind -- and she may choose not to divorce you, just because she believes that you’re still capable of doing good. She may choose to prop you up while you find a new fucking _job_ , whatever the hell form that’s gonna take. She may choose to _stay_ \-- or, more accurately, to let _you_ stay, to allow you to _continue_ to leech ungratefully off of her means -- just because she _loves you_ , even now.” Angelica shakes her head and forces herself to take a step back for the warmth of his breath on her face as she crowds him. “And she does. She’s letting you sleep in your office because she doesn’t want to see you down on your luck, even after everything you’ve done to her. But I don’t carry her burdens. I don’t feel the urge to be remotely fucking nice to you for all the shit you’ve brought on her.” 

She removes her hands from his person and steps back, disgust flooding her features. “You thought I was here for _you_? You’re beyond self-centered. I will choose her happiness over mine every time. Put what _we_ had aside. I’m standing at _her_ side.”

Inexplicably -- despite _all_ that -- Alexander’s mouth is quirking into a smile. “You strike me,” he sings gently, “as a woman who’s never been--”

“Shut up,” she hisses to him.

For once in his life, he does.

“I just might regret that night for the rest of my days,” she says, shaking her head at him. “‘I’m about to change your life.’ Ha! For all the pain that’s befallen her because I introduced you to her instead of taking you for mys--”

Angelica suddenly makes eye contact with him before her gaze flits away.

The silence that passes is haunting.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference, if it was you,” he says, quietly, when she thinks the mortification might kill her. He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be satisfied.”

She swallows and looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Is that right?”

He shrugs. “I’ve _never_ been satisfied.”

She nods and looks to the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. “Well. It’s not really dodging a bullet if you reassign it to your sister.”

He nods, slowly. “I meant what I said. It wasn’t about her. I never meant her harm. I never meant _anyone_ harm.”

“That’s the problem, Alexander,” Angelica says. “You didn’t think about her, or anyone, at all.”

And with a final baleful look at him, she steps silently out of the study, shutting the door quietly in its frame and leaving him and his absurd pyjamas once and for all.

When she re-emerges into the living room, Eliza is still facedown on the couch, her head turned just enough to be able to get enough air to fuel her dramatic snoring.

Angelica stands to look at her for a moment, then sighs, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her. She sets a hand on her back and rubs big, gentle circles -- enough to wake her just slightly, just enough to know that she was there, before easing her to sleep again. “I’m here,” she tells her, and tries to beat back the emotion that wells in the corner of her eye for reasons she can’t quite discern. “I’m--”

Her voice cuts off in her throat, and she stays there for a long time, pressing slow, loving circles into Eliza’s back, in case it might do anything at all to mend her broken heart.


End file.
